


Out of Focus

by honeystick



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Rain, Smoking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 11:36:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14568189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeystick/pseuds/honeystick
Summary: Sherlock goes on an adventure he can’t prove happened. He explores London in a hazy dream, makes some bad decisions, and smokes even though he quit. Thinking, and (surprise!) not thinking ensue.Introspective and Sherlock-centric, Johnlock if you want it to be.





	Out of Focus

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this wormed it’s way into my brain and I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so now we have this. I’m hoping it’s sort of poetic? that’s what I was going for, anyway.
> 
> I noticed both the style change and the tense inconsistencies but it didn’t matter to me enough to fix it. (Note: grammatical mistakes, specifically run on sentences with too many conjunctions are on purpose in this writing. It’s meant to be stylised and leaning on poetic rather than Good English™)
> 
> Enjoy!

Humid... chilly... damp. Rain?

A hazy idea pieced itself together through the fog in Sherlock's brain. Must have come through the windows that John left open earlier this morning.

John... Where...?

Sherlock's eyes drifted lazily from the mug on the side table (John's?), momentarily stopping to admire the floor lamp, then to the windows.

Ah, yes. The windows.

Magnificent, aren't they? Windows? Its like a hole in your house, except it's closed. Like... like the hole in your home is covered in saran wrap. It's great, because you can see the outside, while staying inside. You can keep the outside out and the inside in! John likes to open them, but Mrs. Hudson likes them closed. John likes the outside, Mrs. Hudson likes the inside. Currently though, they're open. Fascinating. The outside has gotten in! Does that mean the inside has gotten out?

John must have opened the windows. Mrs. Hudson hates it when her hair gets all frizzy.

Hadn't he already had this thought?

Mm... can't remember. Whatever, he's having it now.

Sherlock's eyes drift closed, savouring the earthy smells that sit heavily in the living room. What's it called again? Starts with a P, maybe. Like a... A choir. Yes, a symphony of smells conducted by Mother Earth herself. A choir of dirt and rain and maybe some decaying organic material, if we're lucky. It's a choir you can contain in a Petri dish. A petrichoir. No, that's not right. Petri... petri...

_petrichor._

Close enough.

Sherlock smiled lazily to himself, alone in their living room. He cracked open one eye, checking the time on the wall clock on the opposite wall. Maybe it's time to do something. But what? There's no case... John's out... maybe check up on the homeless network? Just a walk, for "funzies"? He found himself trudging to his room, dragging his feet and nearly falling asleep a few times. He dressed quickly, or as quickly as anyone could with this much candy floss clogging their brain. How are you supposed to get fluff out of your head? Fog out of your mind palace? Condensation off your mirror right after a steaming hot shower? Every time you wipe it off it just comes back.

John would know what to do. John always helps. Maybe he can surgically remove the dust bunnies? That would require anaesthetics. Sherlock scoffed under his breath, jumping around and pulling up his trousers. He didn't get clean for nothing.

Finally acceptably dressed for the general public, the great detective walked out of 221B, shrugging on his coat as he locked the door behind him.

Hello, world! He trudged away from the relative safety of 221B and into the cold, damp and... uncomfortably loud London streets. Why's it so loud? Cars whizzing by in the streets, people chattering away into their phones — bumping into him as they passed by (or was he bumping into them?), car horns, so many people, every time he walked passed a building with open doors leaking light there were more noises and more people, and oh! the clicking of silverware and loud table talk drifting from a cafe. People are eating, what time is it? Sherlock's head jerked towards the sky. It's... um. Time, time...

...Between sunrise and sunset? Oh, fuck.

What does it matter? No one is watching him walk to somewhere quieter. A small bridge, old and nearly abandoned, somewhere over an unidentified body of water too big to be a stream and too small to be a river. A woman smokes and leans on the railing, watching the heavy clouds slide. Her smoke curls almost unpredictably through the air and joins them. Any moment now, the rain will come. The woman seems unworried. She watches Sherlock approach in her peripheral vision, says nothing, continues languidly smoking. Her vaguely punk clothes are tattered — they used to be the top of the line — and her messy ponytail is greasy but it matches her atmosphere. Sherlock's already slow pace slows down to a stop a few feet away from her. He matches her posture and watches the dirty water flow into the distance. The woman takes a drag from her cigarette, holds the smoke for a few beats, then blows it out to get lost in the coaxing voices of the stream that would lure pirate captains away from their ships and drown them as they tumble into the ocean, if only on a larger scale than this. Sherlock exhales and he feels like his breath gets carried away too (there’s the smell of tobacco when he inhales). He wonders if this stream really joins the ocean. Maybe it just runs dry into the ground in a few kilometers.

The world is silent, and the rain starts falling.

The woman drops her arm onto the railing towards Sherlock. He glances at the (offered?) cigarette quizzically and she nudges it a few milimeters closer. "You were staring," she says. He eyes it, weighing the pros and cons, before taking it gingerly from her fingers. The smoke fills his lungs and makes him feel strangely whole, and the nicotine hits him like the wave John underestimated while they stood in the ocean during an undercover holiday. He can feel the ocean spray on his skin now, pitter pattering against everything he knows and falling falling falling from the sky. The smoke streams from his lungs like an art form, dissipating quickly in the heavy air of rain. He takes another drag. The guilt hasn't set in yet (he doesn't know if it ever will). The cigarette is returned to the woman's resting but outstretched fingers and she bathes in the waves that aren't there. This is London.

Sherlock looks out on the small river again, only mildly disliking how good the cigarette made him feel. He swore to John he was done.

There are hundreds of tiny ripples broken only by other ripples, in the water that still moves downstream (only, faster now). Their lives cut short by their kin who occupy the same spaces. One drop in still water would ripple until it reached the ends of its new home, but this doesn't. The rain picks up speed and now Sherlock is drenched. The woman sighs as she is drenched too and her cigarette is finished so she drops the stub into the water, turns around, walks away in the same fashion that she did everything else — without a care in the world. He doesn't follow, just stares at the rain on the water below and breathes until this and the feeling of rain everywhere is all he's aware of. It taps on his hair and cools his scalp, runs down his neck and into his shirt and it's cold but he doesn't shiver. It pokes his back gently and seeps into his layers of clothes. Through the coat, the suit jacket, the shirt... His shoes and socks are wet which would be uncomfortable if he cared, but only made him feel like he was standing in the stream he watched so intently. The rain felt good in his lungs. The rain took back the smoke he so welcomingly invited. The rain washed away his worries his stresses his mistakes. He breathed it in and relished it. Inhale, exhale, inhale exhale in out in out and that's all there was.

He stood there until there was no point in staying and his clothes were dripping so hard the rain might as well have been going through Sherlock's body. His eyes opened and made him realise he had closed them. It's time to move on.


End file.
